Life...a chess game that keeps getting harder by the minute. You move a step without fully knowing the consequences and ramifications of your choices. Only three things keep me going, my beloved soulmate, football, and my need for speed. There are not many things that are as fulfilling as driving on a clear road, with 100mph on the clock, with the windows down. Air gushing past, howling behind you...it's just a natural high.

Monday, May 08, 2006

The price for a piece of crazy

Does anyone know what the price is for a piece of ultimate crazy? You might be confused with my question, but just bear with me. You know the crazy things that people do...no, not like "dude, did you hear that? A voice in my head told me to bite your tongue off!" kind of crazy. But crazy things like base jumping from the top of Niagara Falls, or swimming with sharks and doing an upper cut right on it's face as it swims by. Until recently, I never knew how much an ultimate crazy would cost. £415,000. Yep, an ultimate crazy costs £415,000. Why, you may ask? Simple, because that is how much a Koenigsegg CCX would cost. The CCX is undoubtedly the ultimate of all crazy.

Let me elaborate. First, a bit more insight for the car. The CCX is Swedish made supercar with a mid-mounted twin-supercharged 4.7litre V8 that churns out an unbelievable 806bhp. 806! I mean 806hp from a 4.7litre engine? That is truly remarkable. OK, you might remember from my previous post that an F1 engine spits out 300hp per litre, or 904hp from a 3litre V8. But you've got to bear in mind that an F1 engine will only do 10,000 miles it's entire lifetime, and also there are no emission regulations to push it down. The CCX is a road legal car, which means it has to be engineered to last at least 150,000miles. And it also needs to adhere to the ever stringent emission regulations. The 1000hp Veyron is powered by a quad turbo 8litre W16. All this makes the CCX engine even more brilliant. And to top it all off, being nice little swedes, they also made the engine environmental friendly, well for a supercar anyway.

The chassis and body panels, a cocktail of kevlar, carbon fibre and lightweight reinforcements, coupled with an all aluminium engine adds up to 1180kg. So what do you get when you cross an 800hp engine with a 1180kg car? Chaos, that is exactly what you're gonna get, unsurpassable chaos! Tops out at around 250mph and a blitz of only 3.2seconds from 0-62mph, oh my god, that is totally orgasmic. FYI, this car was caught on a speed camera in Texas, USA doing 242mph, which is officially the fastest speeding ticket ever.

But wait. That's not the reason why I called this car the ultimate of all crazy. Just look at the rear end of that car. Can you see anything wrong with it? Nothing? Exactly! There's nothing there! Rear spoilers are important to increase the downforce on the rear tires to provide enough grip and traction, especially at higher speed. So why the hell didn't those blonde scandinavian freaks put a rear spoiler on a 250mph car? Even the Veyron, weighing a full 700kilos more, has a spoiler with not one, but two aerodynamic settings. Well, yes, I know it's got those venturis underneath, but surely, that can't be enough can it? They didn't even equip the car with traction control. I mean, that's like creating bio-hazard nuclear bazookas of mass destruction, and selling them to 10 year olds without a safety lock.

This is really the ultimate of all crazy. An 800hp car that weighs about a tonne with minimal downforce and no traction control. It costs £415,000. Interested anyone?

16 Comments:

Emm, wat you said is reasonable. This car is too fast to justify for at least some sort of inverted wing on the rear to "stick" the car on road at the speed even airplane could take off. If I have 415 grand, I would rather buy a copy of latest "NFS Sizzling Pursuit" and drive it there. To have myself in that car, certainly not before fixing the flaw. All Koenigsegg engineers, hear that??

Unless, of course, the Swedes thought that anyone who had that much money to blow on a car would be wise enough to realize the foolishness of 200+mph. Or they thought that, like so many of these cars, it wouldn't be driven all that much. Perhaps the point, in their mind, was to combine the magic numbers 800 and 1100.

About the RB26DETT in a `67 Mustang fastback...easy. Really, that Mustang chassis isn't all that heavy. Most of the weight is in the 4.7-liter (I believe) V8. So it's not a totally unworkable hybrid to build. If you have very deep pockets.

The problem is...why? The small-block V8 already in the Ford can make absolutely insane power. If you want it lighter, there's probably a way to shoehorn the aluminum LS1 from the Corvette in there. Or possibly an all-aluminum Ford crate engine. The RB26 can easily make 500hp, but so can a lot of other things that would be a lot easier to do.

No, the real problem with that hybrid is the drivetrain. Trying to make the ATTESA computer-controlled AWD play nice with a very different wheelbase would be...difficult. And it would not be helped by that stupid wheel-tire combo they stuck on the cars for the movie.

The absent of a spoiler, could be the engineers answer to reduce the drag coefficiency. Less drag, better top speed, which translates to bigger numbers, which eventually translates to better for marketing. I could be wrong.

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